He wore his tie!

About a year or so ago, we thought it would be really cute to get Max his own button-up shirt and clip-on tie that he could wear to church. As ZZ Top put it so eloquently, "every gal's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man." So I told Chelsea to get a shirt at DI (the local secondhand store) and I'd take him tie shopping. At the tie store in the mall, he looked at all the ties and picked a great yellow one with blue stripes. Very classy. And then he freaked out and refused to wear it from then on, despite gentle coaxing from time to time as he got ready for church.

This last Sunday, I asked him to get dressed for church about four times, causing a screaming, crying meltdown each time. After the last time, I gave him the ultimatum that either he picked clothes and put them on or I was going to pick. And church was starting in about 20 minutes, so he had to focus and do it.

There was no getting dressed, just a melty pile of contrary boy (yes, we all end up having children exactly like us, Mom and Dad) to whom I declared, "I'm picking." And proceeded to take the white shirt off the hanger and the tie out of the closet. As I stuffed the sobbing dead weight into his nice corduroy pants, I had a very vivid flashback to a Sunday years ago when I refused to put on my Sunday shoes, thinking that lacking this vital bit of clothing would exempt me from having to go to church. My dad stuffed me in the car and threw my shoes and socks in with me. They even went into the building without me, leaving me all by myself in the car with my shoes, which were still not on my feet. I sat there for what felt like a half hour, but I was 5, so it was probably 10 minutes before my dad came out and stuffed my feet into socks and shoes. I remember my dad was really frustrated because my ankles hurt, so I tried to be obnoxiously cheerful and calm as I got Max dressed. It was hard.

Not only did he wear his white button-up shirt, but he wore his tie and his shoes (as opposed to his flip-flops).

He ended up looking like this:

I took a picture because it'll probably be years before he dresses up like this again and he looks so darn cute. Remember, out of all the ties in the store, he picked this one himself. That kid's got style, even if he doesn't like it yet.